“Facebook for sports” start-up to go global after raising $2.5 millionStartupSmartA Melbourne-based start-up that describes itself as “Facebook for sports” says it intends to go global with its gamified social network, having raised more than $2.5...

CEOs are under pressure to appear accessible and authentic, but social media like Twitter, with its demands for quick, unscripted updates that can quickly go viral, poses legal and other risks for the executives and their firms.

"If you're challenged with targeting an audience across multiple countries or languages, you probably have a lot of questions about how to create a successful global social media content strategy.

Here are 7 important tips to keep in mind as you're building your global social media content strategy.

1) Segment Your Audience Smartly

First, determine how you want to segment your social media audience by deciding which countries and languages you want to target, and set some social media goals for each of these audiences.

Next, decide if you can use the localization features of the most popular social networks to segment your audience rather than creating a brand new page or profile for each one.

2) Provide Native Translations

Don’t simply take a blog post from your English blog and copy/paste it into Google Translate for your Spanish blog, or vice-versa. Same goes for tweets and Facebook status updates.

Here are just some of the translation service providers you can choose from:

- Milengo- Translations.com- Lingo24- Verbatim Solutions

3) Solicit Content From Local Contributors

From each region you're targeting, recruit guest bloggers who can provide local insights you can’t provide yourself. This is especially important if you decide to set up a separate blog for each language or region that you're targeting. This will keep the content on your blog fresh and varied, as well as relevant to your local audience. In addition, along with guest bloggers comes inbound links from global domain extensions, giving your global blogs an SEO boost.

4) Post Relevant Content

Make sure you're either on top of the hot topics and sensitive issues in each of your target markets, or you hire someone to specialize in each market. In addition, make sure you’re only posting content that's relevant for each specific audience.

5) Use High-Quality Images Wherever Possible

Remember: An image doesn’t need a translation. Visuals are much easier for international audiences to understand, especially if you’re not creating separate profiles for each region or language. They also happen to drive engagement.

6) Understand Color Connotations

Figure out what certain colors mean in different countries before designing your blog and social media profiles.

7) Link All Your Social Channels Together

Your ultimate goal of participating in social media is likely to drive traffic back to your website so you can convert those visitors into leads. If that's the case, you'll want to make it as easy as possible to direct your social media fans and followers back to your website where those conversions can take place. Therefore, make sure you link to the appropriate blog/website within each social media account's About Us or URL sections..."

As we’ve mentioned many times before, blogging is hard. It’s hard to fit the habit into your day and to keep coming up with new and exciting things to talk about. So when inspiration strikes, you need to capture it.

Robin Good: Picsho is a free web app which allows you to search for images on Flickr, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitpic (and on other services too) by using simple hashtags, and to pull in your favorite ones into a public image board on the web that can be shared with anyone.

Robin, this sounded like an awesome idea, but when I played with it and tried to only capture a few photos that I wanted into a collection, it created the collection with all the photos in the hashtag .. seems like some glitches

Hi, Beth. Sorry for the (extremely) delayed response! It definitely sounds like what you experienced was a glitch and/or a flaw in the UX, as Picsho was very early in the beta stage when this was originally shared by Robin Good. We're sure this has been fixed, and we've added lots more features since then. We would be glad if you'd check out the web app again and give us more feedback. Thanks!

Burson-Marseller say that their results indicate that the Global 100 are ?becoming more comfortable than ever using social media.? The fact that 79% of corporate Twitter accounts try to engage users through @mentions?

"Every day, thousands of new pages are created on Wikipedia, requiring hundreds of volunteer editors to check them for quality — a process called “New Page Patrol.” To help these patrollers do their important work, we are pleased to announce the launch of Page Curation, a new suite of tools for reviewing articles on Wikipedia.

Page Curation aims to improve that page patrol experience by making it faster and easier to review new pages, using two integrated tools:

1) New Pages Feed lets you quickly see what new pages have just been created on Wikipedia. Helpful information is provided for each new page, including possible issues and whether or not the page has been reviewed. The feed can be sorted by date, or filtered by a variety of criteria, so you can easily find articles to review by type, or even by user name.

2) Curation Toolbar appears at the right edge of any article selected by patrollers in the New Pages Feed. It allows them to review articles, tag them, and nominate them for deletion — all in one place and with a simple user interface. This toolbar, which is only available to auto-confirmed editors, also includes other useful curation tools.

A number of patrollers have already started using Page Curation, and we hope that more curators will adopt this new toolkit over time..."

Kimberly Gauthier, editor-in-chief of Keep the Tail Wagging, a blog dedicated to all things canine, has channeled her love and passion for dogs into a profitable blog....

Gauthier also stresses the importance of Facebook. Even if your business is a locally based service like a restaurant or a spa, someone you connect with on Facebook may have friends visiting your town or that live in your town. "There's such opportunity here," she said. "It may not turn your business into a $5 million business overnight, but it's a great affordable way to promote your brand."

Gauthier suggested the following resources for bloggers just getting started:

Robin Good: Finding good apps is not easy. iOS or Android hve the same problem on this front. Too many apps and too much effort needed to find out which are the really good ones.

To solve this issue Google has just started collectting and organizing some of the best fashion apps available in its store and it has created a page dedicated just to them called "Apps Focus". This is probably the start of an ongoing effort to curate, pick and organize the very best apps available inside the Google Play Store.

"Google just added another featured area that should provide just a little more discoverability for apps with slightly narrower audiences, in the form of the "Apps Focus" section.

The first App Focus? Fashion and Style - bringing together a collection of some of the best apps for the chic-minded."

Wired.co.uk75 percent of homeless youth use social networksZDNetThe Atlantic reported the results of a new study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, which found that 75 percent of homeless participants in the study used social...

Social Media Marketing Tips – Social Network Tips & TricksBusiness 2 CommunityIn our last blog entry, we talked about how you can improve teleprospecting results through engaging your business contacts using social media.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.